Death is not a gift stupid first slayer
by xanya-forever
Summary: Set straight after "The Gift" from Anya's POV (sorta)
1. First Feelings

Author's Note: This is my first ever fanfic so I hope it's not extremely bad. It's post "The Gift". I've always felt that Anya never got the amount of recognition she deserved for almost dying to save Xander's life, grrrr. Anyway, I suppose this is from her point of view. I'll update more if people seem to like it. See ya, hehehee.  
  
Disclaimer: Er, Joss owns everything cos he is God (in a non sacrilegious way of course). Also, Mutant Enemy (grrrr argh) own the lovely characters I have stolen for my story.  
  
The body looked so peaceful, almost like it was sleeping. It didn't have any visible abrasions marring its serene expression. Did Joyce look like that? Like she had just forgotten to wake up from a happy dream? Anya thought to herself. What about all those people she had cursed? They wouldn't have looked so tranquil and calm, not with bloody entrails hanging out, or boils covering every inch of their tormented bodies.  
  
Everything was still so hazy that it was hard to think. The edge of her vision was obscured by white clouds. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. Suddenly, things began to get fuzzier as the white clouds expanded and she slipped away again.  
  
"Anya!" She heard. The voice was familiar, but sounded so far away. It was nice - she smiled and continued her dissent into the warm void.  
  
"Anya, come back!" It was louder this time, more desperate and accompanied by a gentle shaking, which gradually became more violent.  
  
It was then that she realized she wasn't lying mangled on the ground, buried alive by tones of debris and dirt. She wasn't even touching the ground anymore. Warm, strong - almost to the point of being too strong - arms were holding her up, protecting her from the comforts of the vast whiteness. It was then, too, as she was dragged back from the relief of comatose, that she became aware of the pain. Searing, tearing through her body like hot pokers and pounding knives. At least, she thought it was her body. It resembled her body - two arms, two legs, one torso. It was even wearing the clothes she dimly remembered putting on. But the oozing blood that covered it, the disturbing angle of several joints and the limp, lifelessness of the limbs made her feel sick to the stomach. Nothing so disgusting could belong to her.  
  
The dead body lying on the ground looked more alive than her one.  
  
The arms tightened around her. Xander. That's who it was. Her boyfriend- no, her fiancé. So the world didn't end, they'd be getting married. She'd have a big white dress, many bridesmaids caring for every need. Or maybe it had ended, maybe this was hell. No, she'd been to hell dimensions before. This was too real, she knew it had really happened. She sank back into Xander's arms and looked at the unmoving body. She couldn't look any more, so Anya turned her gaze to the others. Willow's face had crumpled like a wet paper bag, and was soaked with grief. She was clutching Tara's uninjured hand so hard that Anya thought another cast would be necessary. Her body shook, rattled with sadness and rage. Tara, on the other hand, in a reversal of recent roles, was the protector. All that Willow had done for her these past few days was returned, multiplied by a thousand. But though she was physically with Willow, Anya could see her eyes and mind were glued to the body.  
  
Dawn showed none of her trade mark grief - the tears that were usually so quick to fall stayed at bay. She just stood there, ignoring the blood still trickling down her slashed stomach, staring almost through the body. Her mother and now her sister were gone. Forever. Anya saw her stop breathing, no doubt trying to join them in death. As she began to worry, Dawn let out the air and dropped down heavily on her knees, now hyperventilating.  
  
There was Giles, the look on his face was one of such failure, the look that only a father staring at the body of his dead child can get. He was alive, and she wasn't. He had failed in his duty to protect her, the person he loved most in the world. Anya wanted him to take of his glasses and clean them, to do anything that resembled the ordered man she had come to love and respect. But he didn't, of course, he couldn't do anything.  
  
And Spike. The one who, apart from Anya herself, had seen the most deaths - he was probably even the cause of the majority. Anya knew that no other loss had ever hit him this way. He was feeling it for the first time, and she knew exactly what that was like. He broke down onto his knees and cried, grief wracking his body and blood pouring down at his face. She watched as he clutched he eyes, his un-beating heart, and his non existent soul. It was too much, she had to turn away.  
  
Finally, to Xander. She didn't even need to see him to know what was going through his mind, his heart and his soul. The wet dears were dropping onto her stomach, mixing with blood, sweat and dust. They were like heavy raindrops of heartache. He didn't fall to the ground, didn't surrender himself to the grief, but stopped noticing anything but the body in front of him.  
  
Only then did she finally realize that it wasn't just a body. It hit home faster than it had with Joyce - she was experienced now. This was Buffy, her friend. Anya knew Buffy only tolerated her for Xander's sake. But things had been changing the last few months of her life. They'd been through a lot together, for 'casual acquaintances'. Maybe they'd never have been the best of friends. The kind you ring up just to complain about the milk running out, or seeing someone funny in the Magic Box. Maybe they could have, though - Anya had begun to appreciate Buffy's quick jokes, her loyalty to the Scoobies (especially "ordinary" old Xander) and her complete braveness when facing overwhelming evil. What was it? Five or six apocalypses and she had defeated them all. But it would never happen now, they weren't going to have the chance to grow old together. To buy the same anti wrinkle cream, make lots of money from their long term stocks (well, Anya hadn't told anyone which she'd invested in, she wanted to make the most money, but she might have later on) or be God parents to each other's tiny pink children. They'd lost that opportunity.  
  
She dropped her head in complete resignation and just stared. Raindrops were falling all around them and the escaped crazy people were scurrying to and fro, but no one cared. This time, Xander let her yield to the unconscious, and she didn't blame him. 


	2. Lies

Author's Note: Thanks to every lovely little sugar puff who reviewed my last chapter. keeps me going in my lazy days. Okay, that's every day but shhhhhh. Er, Anya's the best character ever, so I've decided to continue from her POV. Xander will be in it more too, I hope, cos I love him a lot with his sexy body.. Sorry, don't mind me.  
  
Disclaimer: As I said before, Joss owns it all and I would buy it from him but I don't have enough money (I had to pay my own bail for when I was in jail after that little stalking outburst. I'm sure James isn't holding it against me).  
  
Dedication: To my special pet, Rosalind and I'm sorry I lied, I have shame issues. I'll meet up with you tonight for some work with the "spank stick".  
  
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She didn't remember what had happened when she woke up. Well, not for about thirty seconds anyway. She opened her eyes slowly, the dim light hurting them a little, and blinked. There was a sound somewhere near, a sound she had only heard once before, just after Joyce - Xander. He was sitting in an arm chair, head in hands, sobbing quietly. That's when she remembered. Everything came flooding back to her. Straight after that, the pain was back again too. It had dulled now, become more throbbing and less searing, but that didn't make much difference in the size of it.  
  
Where were the nurses? The immaculately clean women dressed all in white? The white sheets tucking her in so tightly that she couldn't move, and the white walls decorated sparsely with pictures meant to brighten her spirits, but usually achieved the opposite? It took a few more seconds for Anya to realize that she wasn't in hospital, she was in Xander's bed. She'd been there many times before, usually under more, um 'fun' circumstances than this.  
  
She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry and she was sure she could taste blood. She looked at Xander again. She couldn't see his face, and she could barely hear him, but the way his body shook she knew he was still crying. She just wanted him to stop, to forget about what had happened, like she had while she was unconscious. Maybe she could knock him out for a while. he wouldn't mind, it was for his own good. But was she strong enough? That was the real problem. She could barely lift her arms.  
  
"Xander?" she croaked. Her voice had come out weak and raw, not at all how she'd expected it. His head flew up and she saw the tears covering his face, glistening in the light from the bed side lamp. Relief flashed through him, and Anya was glad that she'd made him happy, if only for a second. She was surprised, he looked the same as usual, perhaps a bit of shading under his eyes, but no tell tale signs of all he'd been through. She knew she was lucky to have found such an attractive man, God knows she'd seen some ugly ones in her time. Not Xander, he was gorgeous. With his deep brown eyes that reminded her of a dog full of loyalty. So warm and melty. especially when he smiled at her, they looked like puddles of chocolate. Anya was getting a little glazed over, but she managed to come back to reality.  
  
"Xander I -" she tried again, but he held up a hand to stop her. Why wasn't he moving? Why was he just sitting there, staring at her with his eyes so full of sadness? He should be kissing her, telling her how happy he was that she was alive. That's what seemed to happen in movies. The devoted and distressed boyfriend was standing over his dying girlfriend, holding her hand and straining for her pulse. As she regained consciousness, he would break down with tears of ecstasy and say "Oh Dr, she's come back to me, it's a miracle!" and the kindly old doctor with glasses would tell her she was very lucky, and she'd be going home in a few days, and maybe give her a lollipop. Or maybe he would be making jokes. Yes, that was the Xander she knew, always making jokes to help people feel better.  
  
He still didn't say anything, didn't take her hand or offer her a massage (he was so good at that normally). That's when she knew that she'd have to be the strong one, be the mother, but not in an incest-y type way because she knew Xander didn't really like his mother. Anya tried to get up, to go over there and sit on his lap, to wipe the tears off his face and tell him that everything was going to be alright, even if it wasn't. She didn't normally lie, what was the point? She liked to say exactly what she thought, because people needed to know the truth. Why should she tell them they looked nice in a dress when they didn't? Did they want to be embarrassed? Especially if she wanted the dress herself, it shouldn't go to someone who looked ridiculous in it. But over the last few years, being a real girl and experiencing the world with actual feelings, she'd come to realize that sometimes people needed to hear lies.  
  
As she pulled herself up, a fresh wave of pain washed over her, and she felt the familiar blackness creeping up. She tried not to welcome it, but in all honesty, she wanted to forget about the real world for a while. Her love for Xander won over, and she succeeded in conquering the fog. As she landed on her pillow with a squeal, the spell on Xander was broken. He jumped up and grabbed her head, softly so as not to hurt her, but with an urgency she'd never seen before. When his fingers didn't run through her hair, she knew something was wrong. Anya ran her hands over the place she expected to find soft curls, but felt, instead, a bandage. Oh no, what if all her hair had been burnt off?! She'd been growing since that time last year when she'd decided to cut it all off. a disastrous mistake, not quite right for her bone structure. She knew not to try that again. goodness, why couldn't her mind stay on one thing?  
  
"Ahn, I have to tell you something - tell you everything. No, don't interrupt." He said as she opened her mouth to speak. "It's just that, you've been unconscious for about four hours. and already so much has happened. I didn't even know if you'd wake up again. But the thing is, if you hadn't it would have been all my fault. Just like Buffy's death was all my fault." He paused and tried to pull himself together. Anya wanted to tell him that Buffy's death wasn't his fault, how could it have been? He'd fought for her until the end, and worked up quite a sweat in the process. But she knew not to interrupt him when he was like this. "You pushed me out of the way, Ahn, you saved my life. I just remember seeing your body crushed under all that debris - it was worse than seeing Buffy's dead body. Anyway, now everything's ruined. She's dead, and we're still here. *I'm* still here when I shouldn't be. She has to protect Dawn, has to protect the world. and what about me? I'm just a carpenter. Xander, the butt monkey of the hellmouth. Dawn's lost her whole family, Giles isn't even Giles anymore and, and you." He stopped and Anya saw that it was true, everything had been ruined. Xander's heart had been ripped to shreds and there was little more than a shell left.  
  
"Xander, I know this is awful, but it would be so much worse if you had died, even if Buffy was still alive." Well, she thought so anyway. It was terrible, especially for poor little Dawn, but Anya couldn't bare the thought of Xander dead. She would rather have been dead - in fact, she had practically died to save him. She knew that it sounded calloused and hard to speak this way, but it was what she felt. Lies were no longer any good. Things weren't going to be okay, not for a while, and Xander didn't need to be told that they were. What he needed was to heal, and maybe some sex. but later on. Right now, she would help him through it.  
  
He didn't look angry that she'd said that, wasn't about to bite her head off with rants about how wonderful Buffy was. He knew exactly what she meant. When he'd realized that she'd sacrificed herself to save him. well he didn't have words. Buffy had done the same thing for Dawn, and now she was being called a hero. Xander knew that people would forget that Anya had done this for him, but he wouldn't. He didn't care that others were more upset about Buffy, this was his life. He smiled, probably the one time he would for a long time. Things would get better, Anya would see to that. 


	3. Heart vs Head

Author's Note: Once again, reviews are very much appreciated and motivating, even to me. If you know me, I'm the kind of person who doesn't change the channel if I can't reach the remote cos it's too much effort. Anyway, on with story. I haven't actually got any idea what this chapter will be about, I suppose I'll just make it up as I go along as I have for the others. Enjoy, my angel cakes.  
  
Disclaimer: Okeydokey, we've been through this but I'm putting off writing the chapter cos I don't know what to write. Joss owns everything (especially my heart heheheheeh).  
  
Dedication: This is for Cathy because she is my little bottle of methylated spirits.  
  
Author's Revised Note: Er, I just decided that this is going to be a few weeks, possibly a month or something, after the last chapter. Oh yeah, and I'm very sorry that I haven't updated for a while. school and what not.  
  
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"She saved the world. A lot."  
  
They'd all pitched in with the headstone, but it was Anya who'd come up with the final epitaph. At first people had scoffed - they hadn't actually been able to laugh. They weren't ready for that yet. Anya loved Buffy, but eight days trying to think of a suitable epitaph had started to grate her cheese. That, and the endless pain she was forced to endure. Everyone had been quiet, they usually were these days. They'd only opened their mouths when they'd thought they'd had an idea. She was never one to be silent for long periods of time, but she had to respect them. Respect, it was something else she was getting sick of. Of course, most of their time was spent downstairs. Cooking, cleaning, helping Dawn. Anya couldn't go downstairs, she wasn't even able to get out of bed yet. On one occasion, she'd just blurted it out.  
  
"Buffy, she, she. she fought demons. She saved the world." She had cocked her head to one side, thinking about the previous five years. "A lot." She'd stated, justifying Buffy's commitment. She didn't want anyone to think that she didn't care about Buffy, they were prone to jumping down her throat for things like that. Only Xander had smiled, if not a little ruefully.  
  
"Anya - ever the wordsmith." He'd said, mirroring his old words. He was like a ghost of that Xander too. The Xander who knew how to laugh, to make other's laugh, to make Anya laugh... who knew how to cry. Anya missed him so much. Admittedly, she remembered the last time he'd said those words were when Joyce had died, but even then he'd remembered how to be properly alive. He was broken. Her Xander was broken like a small, vexing toy and she didn't know how to fix him. Why couldn't he smile at her misinterpretations or blush at her forthright comments on the orgasms he used to give her?  
  
Right now she was sitting up in bed, meditating on the things at hand, and calculating the profits of her stocks. They were going quite nicely, really. Seems the old apocalypse didn't put people off spending money the way it used to. Maybe when she got out of bed she would go to the Magic Box. Sometimes she just liked to look at all the merchandise. undress it with her eyeballs. It was all so ordered, so neat and controlled. Jars of newt eyes went on the one set of shelves, candles on the tables at the front and the dangerous spell books on the platform reached by the ladder. She knew exactly where to find everything, nothing ever surprised her. Anya missed that stability in her life. Everything surprised her now. For example, at this very moment she was thinking about stocks. Not so out of the ordinary, really, not for her. But it was the middle of the night.  
  
She hadn't been able to sleep properly since the time she'd been unconscious, since the night Buffy had died. Sometimes she was awoken by her own nightmares. She would dream about things she'd done in the past, as a vengeance demon. The people she'd maimed, lives she'd ruined. She used to reminisce about them, the good old days of killing. That was something else that used to be stable, vengeance. It was always there for her to wreak. Men kept on cheating on their silly girlfriends, who cried and sniffled and cried, boring Anya to tears herself before finally saying those two wonderful words. "I wish." Now all she connected those words with was death. Buffy. Had she really done that to people? Those insignificant males she'd looked down on, hated, took such pleasure in maiming, ruining, killing were now all back to haunt her. She would toss and turn until one of her injuries woke her up, screaming in its own way.  
  
Those were the good nights. It was waking up to a different sound that she really dreaded. The sound that had first brought her back from her coma. Xander crying. He didn't know she was awake. As a matter of fact, Anya hadn't even told him about her nightmares. This was unusual, she usually just blurted out anything that came into her head. Not anything that came into her heart though, they were two separate places. She knew she was, well headstrong had been used to describe her. And literal, she sometimes had trouble figuring out the difference between sarcasm and reality. It was the fact that sarcasm wasn't the truth that stumped her. Her heart told her that this was the way to go, being upfront and truthful was a good thing. But in her head, she had no trouble lying. She would tell herself that Xander would be fine. That everyone reacted like this to death.  
  
Why didn't she listen to her heart? Her heart was where Xander was. She could tell him that not everything would be fine, that things took time to heal. This was how she explained her physical injuries, and Giles' going back to England, and Dawn's non stop crying. She didn't need to lie to him, because he was her heart. But last week she'd read a book which told her that your brain knew best. It sensed things before you realized you'd felt them. So now, she listened to her head rather than her heart. She didn't talk to Xander any more, didn't tell him what was going on her heart, about her nightmares, didn't ask him why he cried or how she could help him.  
  
It had started again, the crying. She turned to look at him. They weren't in the same bed. In fact, Xander didn't sleep in a bed; he slept in the armchair facing her. He hadn't wanted to hurt her in the night, and wanted to be ready to jump up in the middle of the night to help Dawn. He always wanted to be the brave one, but still never realized that he was. Anya knew he was insecure, most of it because of his parents and their lack of love. Right now, he looked like he needed a mother to cradle him in her arms, sing a nursery rhyme about a spider and something to do with milk that Anya was too clear on. Or that one about the baby falling out of a tree. That was popular with mothers.  
  
The book she'd read was stupid. Everything Anya was feeling right now came from her heart... she hadn't intercepted the feelings in her head, told them they were incorrect because her brain knew best and tried to *think* about what was happening. Nothing that had happened made sense. Buffy had dived into a portal to save Dawn, her somewhat irritating younger sister who used to be a huge green mass of energy. Since when did any of that make sense? Her head didn't still understand it, but her heart understood that it caused pain and hurt, and had been done out of love.  
  
Feelings. They were what controlled people. Children were born out of feelings and people were murdered. It had nothing to do with what your brain told you, you were ruled by your heart. Anya had been alive long enough to know this. All those times she'd exacted vengeance, it had been from a broken heart. Her whole existence had been based on what people felt, not what they thought. She wouldn't be here now, wouldn't have ever worked at the Magic Box, had sex or met Xander if it hadn't been for broken hearts. So she'd figured it out, she'd finally got it. From now on, Anya was going to talk to Xander about what he was feeling. like a psychiatrist, except without the qualifications.  
  
"Xander! Xander.. Please wake up. We could play a word game or.. Talk about our feelings?" Hey, the middle of the night was as good a time as any.  
  
Author's Note: Well I just wrote that as it came. I hope it wasn't too confusing. Mmm, told you there'd be more Xander cos, after all, he's a gorgeous hunk of a man with a smooth, hairless chest hehehehe. Please review, and if you've got any ideas for the next chapter I'd love to hear them! 


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